Month: November 2024

WEST BEND, Iowa – People who think seriously about how to limit the toll industrialized American agriculture takes on communities, land, and water ought to visit the Fehr family’s organic Clear Creek Acres in northern Iowa. With just shy of 800 residents, West Bend is barely a blip on a prairie landscape, but it has become home base for an uncommonly large expanse of organically grown crops- operations that have found success in challenging the …

On July 31, 2024 the Michigan Supreme Court issued one of the most significant decisions in decades to strengthen safeguards for the state’s natural environment and especially its clean water. With a 5-2 majority, the court ruled that the state Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) had full authority to “take all necessary steps” to protect Michigan waters from agricultural pollution. The import of the decision cannot be overstated. It reverses decades of …

EDON, OH — For 60 years, this one stoplight Ohio town has been known as a place where time appears to stand still. With more than 400 Amish residents settled in and around the rural community that straddles the Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan state lines, it is common to see large families traveling by horse-drawn black buggies to and from farms where they milk dairy cows and grow corn. Adhering to a strict religious doctrine …